Sardan

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So here's the proposal, to make rep a bit easier to understand and a bit more reliable for being able to determine PvP drops:

1. Rep timer is a hard 5-minute timer. Rather than resetting each time you kill that same target, it simply resets five minutes after the first kill.

2. The rep timer does not start unless you or a teammate gets the kill.

3. Being killed by, or attacked by, another player will not start your rep timer against them. The only way to start the rep timer is to kill someone.

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As usual, a sensible and well thought out proposal from MacSkull. I 100% agree that this would fix the drop problem and entirely take care of the "deadlock" problem of zone PVP with a small number of participants.

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I still want a little chibi-Shivan added to the noncombat vet reward pets. I'd never pick anything else...

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That would be hysterical. I'd get that one too, for sure.

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/SD needs some investments, but I didn't do any evil marketing, and am still able to cap all positions on defense by the time I reached 50. I took the whole secondary, and the medicine pool, not tough/weave.

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Can you post your build, please? I'd like to see a capped build that didn't require large investments and didn't use weave. Is it capped with no teammates standing near?

Since you're just now returning to the game, presumably you're not sitting on tons of infamy. So I'd say go Willpower. It's a smoother ride and you don't have to have a huge budget.

I created a Fire/SR scrapper and once he got around level 40 with lots of +defense set bonuses he became godly. But earlier in his career he was pretty squishy and without investing in all the set bonuses to hit the soft caps, he would've been decent but nothing special.

Go Willpower and have fun.

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The best part? Doing it with someone the first time, and after fighting up the Valley of Lag, you come through the small pass and their jaw just drops. "GIANT ROBOT? COUNCIL? WHAT THE BUDDHA?"

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Honestly there's no situation you face as a villain that isn't made better by adding a giant robot.

This thread isn't so much official as officious.

So to both the mistitled thread and the ideas it contains: don't want.

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How viable is Shields without any IO support? I was planning on taking the team powers (mostly because I like teaming and for the DEF debuff resistance), maybe tough and weave, but I don't want to have like 9 toggles to even live through a full spawn. Got that on my fire scrapper, thanks.

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I built a Sheild brute who's very tough but has to run a ton of toggles and I invested a staggering (to me) amount of inf to buy lots of IO sets. I'd say if you just want something that's strong on pure SOs, look elsewhere. Willpower is the most commonly recommended. Invincibility has gotten some buffs and is stronger than it used to be but you do have to cherry pick your foes for max effectiveness.

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Now we just need to explain how, once you're there, to find the secret lounge room, how to get to the other side of the dam, and how to find the entrance to the tunnels where some of the missions are.

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That drove me NUTS the first time. I actually petitioned for help because I thought the misson entrance was bugged. The nice GM that responded walked me to the cave that was the entrance to the tunnels.

Also, if you start using the new(ish) Architect Entertainment buildings for missions they award Tickets instead of dropping enhancements, recipes, or salvage. If you go upstairs in the AE building you can cash in tickets for SOs. I just did this on a lowbie for some DOs and noticed with pleasure that the store offered me +3 DOs--I wasn't stuck with the normal choices of 10/15/20. I presume it works that way with SOs too, and if so it's actually a better way to go.

But once you're able to slot level 30 enhancements (i.e. you're level 27 or higher) you should really look into getting generic IOs. They always stay the same strength and never turn red.

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Safeguard and Mayhems would be nice.

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Agreed.

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5) Melee Centric: Did you know that Arachnos Soldiers are weak to melee? Cimerorans tear my Bane Spider character up, even on lowest difficulty settings. The stacking -def(all) from all those spammed Broadsword attacks makes Cimeroran Traitors just about the only enemies that threaten my bots/FF mastermind, too. Let me guess: you're a tank with a resistance-based primary?

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Nope. When I bring a tank it's an Ice tank, pure defense but with strong debuff resists. My second-favorite characters to use have been my fire/kin corr and fire/kin controller, neither of which has much defense to speak of. My current fav is my elec/shield brute, again defense based and without nearly the debuff resists my icer has.

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However, why is it "unfair" for me to translate my professional success into leveling the playing field with some kid who has no responsibilities and thus has time to amass untold wealth and power in the game.

One of the reasons that I love the market is that it allows me to make a decent sum of inf without farming. Micro-transactions that matter would just provide another choice.

3) Ultimately, other than PvP (which is broken), this really isn't a competition. Yes, I know I just described it as such above, but that was in response to Alt's point. In general, I really don't care what some other guy does. I play for me. I like shinies, not because some other guy doesn't have them, but because I do.

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I didn't quote your entire post because I hate when people quote a huge wall of text but add only a line or two at the bottom. But I was sorely tempted. Nicely stated. In some ways this is like arguing religious doctrine. I don't think you'll sway any of the anti-microtransaction crowd, but you made your points quite well.

I have an on-again-off-again participation with the market. I know some people treat it as an ongoing minigame all on its own, but to me it's really not fun. Not painful, but not fun either. I think "tedious" would be an apt description.

The first time I got seriously into marketeering was just as an arbitrary challenge to see if I could get to the inf cap on my favorite hero. That done, I lost interest for quite a while. More recently I created a brute and got fixated on having a very costly build. It felt good to be able to spend over a billion on that character, including some jaw-dropping "buy it nao" purchases.

... Hmm, I just realized that my description of "very costly" is probably laughable to some reading this forum. If you went all out on a dream build that included purples, Miracle/Numina/5 LotGs and some PVP IOs, you could easily spend multiple billions if you were paying "get it nao" prices. Well, anything over a billion is still in the "holy cow" realm to me!

So I'll likely get back into it for a while to build up the reserves again. But it's not something I do continually.

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Not meant as an insult to BaBs, but its sad when the only dev that connects to the playerbase on any level is the animations guy. (Again, no insult BaBs, ur awesum i swearz )

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After all, we never see pohsyb, WarWitch (Attempt to summon - stands in front of a mirror and chants "Warwitch, Warwitch, WARWITCH!" :P), Ghost Falcon, SexyJ, or Positron.

I would of included Synapse and Sunfire but we seemed to of scared them off.

Quite frankly, that's a lot larger list than many other MMOs.

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Don't forget Castle; next to Babs he's probably the most active dev on the forums.

The devs on this game are more accessible to players than any other MMO I've heard of. Complaining about it is like a millionaire complaining that he's not a billionaire.

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Then he came over to me and handed me a wakie. While I rezzed he told me, that I should better stay in the lowbie area where the spawns aren't as tough as those that downed me. I told him about my mission and that I just couldn't find the area where I was supposed to look for Hellions (my, I was really a n00b then ). He explained it to me, said good bye and then he teleported away.

He leaned back a bit, opened his arms, flashed and was gone!!!

Wow, that was soooo cool. How I wanted to be able to that, too. Being able to move from one spot in the game to a completely differrent spot in the blink of an eye. I was really wondering how it worked. I assumed that the power allowed for some kind of bookmarks you could set as your teleport target areas and that you were getting more bookmarks the higher you leveled.... and I wanted to do that, too! Teleport was so awesome, it was the coolest travel power in the game and I couldn't even imagine how people could take something as mundane as flight, super speed or super jump.

Well, I later respecced out of teleport and took flight.

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I loved your story, Myriad. One of my first "holy cow, this is COOL" moments was on an early team in The Hollows. The team lead was already at the mission door, and was using Recall Friend to TP us to it. I was the first one he transported. He had a bind "Prepare to be transported through the mystical ether to my location, Sardan!" and I went, "Err, what?" Then *flash* and I'm standing in front of him. My jaw dropped. Then I saw him teleport one teammate after another, and I just dug the animation, how the character sort of pulled his clenched fist towards his face like "come here NOW" and people did. It's funny because it's not like it's a huge flashy attack power like Inferno or Foot Stomp, but I've always admired the animation for Recall Friend because to me it's just so perfect.

Later, at the end of that mission, the team lead thanked everyone for coming and logged. I realized I was a looooong way from the safe area. My heart was pounding as I tried to work my way back to Lt Wincott. I found out that falling into Grendell's Gulch was sort of like being transformed into the girl who has fallen and hurt her leg in a horror movie. Not a happy outcome.

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I've been meeting quite a few new players as of late. I think they've been trickling in ever since the architect edition released.

Seems like a good sign to me

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Agreed! I love seeing new players. They're the lifeblood of the game.

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sequels to mmos tend to have the effect of splitting the playerbase. some move on, and some stay behind because that is where their characters they have grown attached to are, and both appear diminished. lineage 2 has been reported as having disappointing numbers vurses lineage 2, eq2 never got a large fanbase(shame because it was a good game) and ascarons call 2 died while the original still lives on. so honestly if they could get by with expansions and incremental engine upgrades, thats probably smarter than the path these 3 games indicate.

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Emphatically this. I hope there's no sequel because it'd split the playerbase. I *do* very much want them to continually upgrade this game. I am hoping that Going Rogue will include a graphics engine upgrade.

What troubles me is the job posting that Paragon Studios has that is looking for a producer "for our next MMO". I don't want to see a Cryptic-style brain drain where 3/4 of the resources are shifted to a new MMO title with just a skeleton crew left on this one. We've been there, done that.

Finally, people seem to have odd ideas about how much time and effort it takes to create a new MMO. It's pretty normal to take 3 years to bring something to market.

To have an option like this work, any purchased IO would have to be flagged as non-tradeable so it could never leave the character it was purchased for. As long as that restriction was in place, I wouldn't mind it.

The precedent for me is what they did with respecs. You can get a respec recipe random drop (unless you're an AE baby!), you can earn a respec, or you can buy a respec. But when you buy one you don't get a respec RECIPE that could then be converted to inf.

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A big part of MMOs is the striving to join the upper echelon of the playerbase: the "epeen" mentality.

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I think you're likely right but I also think that if that's true, COH has done it very poorly. A gear-based game like WOW got that aspect right. You can simply stand around in a high traffic area in that game and let people ooh and aah at all your epic gear that they can plainly see.

In COH if you have 600 badges, maybe 1 player in 50 will check your badge sheet and notice. If you have every purple in the game, you're just another face in the crowd unless someone scans your set bonuses.

There's very little in this game in the way of high prestige items that have obvious visual cues.

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I think the argument was that some people posting about a particular activity or another on the forums, while likely to draw some attention, probably won't show up as big blips on the radar, as opposed to datamining of in-game actvities. I don't think anyone on the forums needed to say anything about arena farming, meows, or Freakshow, but they certainly showed up as "wow, look at this" points in datamines.

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I really wonder. It was pretty eye-popping when Babs posted today that they weren't aware of the STF bug even though it had been repeatedly /bug'd. He essentially said, "If you want us to notice it, post it in the forums." He later backtracked, errr I mean clarified but it was still thought-provoking.

Many of us think that the devs constantly have analytics running that give them penetrating insight into all aspects of the game. They may, they may not. Just because data exists in a big DB doesn't mean anyone is looking at it. In my earliest job fresh out of college I worked in an IT department in a Fortune 200 company. One of the things that struck me was the effort put into collecting vast quantities of data that then went largely ignored. Data != knowledge.

I'm not going to the extreme of asserting that NO datamining takes place. We know that datamining resulted in XP curve smoothing. We know that at least once in a while Synapse looks at adjusting merits. But I really wonder whether the devs do much datamining on a regular basis--not data collection, but meaningful analysis.

I know correlation doesn't imply causation but the timing of the discussion of farming for PVP IOs and the subsequent "bug" that removed all PVP rewards is awfully fishy.

I was mulling about why I like to do the ITF so much. What makes it so good? TL;DR version: they got a bunch of small factors right, and they all add up.

Here's my more detailed list:

1) Wide level range, capping at 50
The LGTF is pretty awesome but the earliest you can do it is 45. You can do the ITF as early as 35. A TF like Katie Hannon is super fun but I'd prefer not to exemp and lose half my powers and all my set bonuses, thanks. I can play the ITF with my character midway in his career at 35 and do it all the way through 50 replete with IO sets. By capping at 50, the ITF offers me unlimited replayability.

2) Unique enemies
Yes, many people are excited about the new Reichsman TF/SF, because who doesn't like beating up on Nazis? But to me they're just Council in dress uniforms, and I've fought enough Council for 5 lifetimes. The Cimerorans are unique, you don't find them elsewhere.

3) Unlockable costumes
The ITF unlocks the extremely cool looking roman armor, plus cool nictus versions of the swords and shield by doing the TF more than once. No other accomplishment in the game gets you such amazing costume bits (although the Rularuu and Vanguard unlockables are pretty cool).

4) Not an abundance of mezzers
On my squishies, the ITF is much more fun than the LGTF due to all the Rikti mezzers.

5) Enemies that like to get in your face
If you have big PBAoEs like Footstomp or buffs like Invincibility or Against All Odds, life is good fighting Cimerorans. Again comparing to the LGTF, some of the Rikti like to close to melee, but many don't. That's cool, but when I'm playing a brute, tank, or scrapper, the ITF has the edge in fun. Even my squishies like fighting the melee-oriented Cimerorans because staying at range actually provides meaningful damage mitigation.

6) Enemies that are juuuust right
Cimerorans aren't pushovers. A crit from a Praefectus Castrorum will get anyone's attention. I like that they're a threat yet not as difficult as groups like Carnies, Malta, or Vanguard. To me the balance is just right. If they were made weaker the TF would get boring. Stronger and they'd be overwhelming. Romulus is good too; occasionally teams fail to take him down nowadays, but he's not much trouble for most. Contrast that with Reichsman and even The Honoree, where the fights can really drag on. Any AV fight where it becomes de rigeur to use Shivans and Warburg nukes, I'm not interested in.

7) Co-op
It's just great having the extra variety of being able to mix-n-match heroes and villains

8) Painless maps
Caves that are easy to get around in and big, interesting outdoor maps. Very pleasant.

9) Very little travel
A big part of the tedium of older, larger TFs is all the zoning. The ITF is worlds better, with all mission entrances 30 seconds away from each other. Plus the mission entrances all make sense in the game world, unlike taking the train to a secret 5th Column base in Boomtown in the new Riechsman TF!

10) Ample rewards
A single ITF run always gives more than enough merits for a random roll. That's satisfying.

11) TIME
Being able to do it in roughly an hour with an average PuG team is the best. They could revamp Posi so it was one dream mission after another, but if it still took 3-5 hours it would be a pleasure that I could rarely experience.

For me, there's no other TF that comes close to the ITF in overall fun because of all these factors. Yes, the "canyon of lag" is horrible, but that's a minor speedbump in an otherwise fantastic ride.

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For things like this, that have a very dramatic impact on game play, cause crashing, affect a lot of people, can be used as major exploits, etc...it'd be really helpful if you could bring those issues to the forums where they have a chance of being immediately and directly seen by us.

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I was pretty surprised by Bab's response indicating that they weren't aware of the STF issue because the STF bug had been noted several times in multiple forums. I wanted to make sure that our concerns over the PVP IOs weren't going to simply be overlooked, so I PM'd Synapse and asked him to review the concerns raised in this thread. He's the "rewards guy" so I figured it might be something he implemented. He replied and indicated that he'll check with the software engineer who did the implementation.

So this is of course no promise of any changes, but at least we know for sure that the appropriate dev will at least see our concerns.

EDIT: Consider this my request to all of you not to PM Castle, Posi, Babs, etc. on the PVP IO issue. Synapse has always come across to me as a straight shooter so I have no doubt that when he says he'll make sure that the right person will see this, it'll get done.

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Is this the best of all possible fixes? It is if their target is a 1 in 100 chance of a PvP recipe drop a minimum of every 5 minutes.

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Your analysis (not quoted here) ignored a couple of very important points people made upthread. When A kills B, A gets a 5 minute timer for B *AND* B inexplicably gets a 5 minute timer for A. And the timer doesn't run down for a linear 5 minutes. It gets reset every time A kills B or B kills A. Thus it's likely that unless a zone is absolutely flooded with players, you could easily get into a deadlock type of situation where a small number of players PVPs like crazy over an extended period of time and for the bulk of that time none of them have any chance at all for PVP drops. What this system does is reward engaging in PVP strictly once per 5 minutes, never more frequently than that. So if people care about rewards at all we'll end up with teams that rush out of the base with all their tier 9 powers blazing, go full bore until they get a couple of kills or get killed, then retire to the base to chat and let everything recharge. Yay.

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People who wouldn't normally pvp are now less inclined to do so since the chance of getting a worthwhile reward is so inexplicably small. Seems counter-productive to me, but I guess I don't know what they're actually TRYING to accomplish, only what they will accomplish.

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Yup. To me it makes no sense to add PO's to the game but make them essentailly unobtainable, except to the ultra-elite few. I understand you can play the game with just SOs or generic IOs. No set bonuses are literally required. But it becomes frustrating to have increasing numbers of shineys out there that aren't obtainable except but the ultra-elite or those that pay to use RMT services.

If their goal is to encourage PvP via the existence of POs, then they need to hugely increase the drop rate. If they did, then even a noob like me would figure "hey, if I spend an hour or two in a zone getting my [censored] kicked by PvPers, I'm still likely to get a nice drop if I'm on a team". Basically I could spend a couple of hours doing a LGTF or a couple of hours in zone PVP and have a decent chance at a juicy reward either way.

If they're afraid of bumping up the drop rate and then incurring player wrath by later nerfing it, they could set up an event. Call it "mega-drop week". The idea is for a week the PVP recipes would drop like crazy. The zones would be flooded. That way they could revert drop rates and it's not a nerf, it's just the end of an event. With this in place they could do it a few times a year, dramatically increasing supply (at least periodically) and it'd be likely to recruit a bunch of new folks to participate more regularly in PVP which I think was the goal for POs in the first place!

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# Fixed PvP rewards to function once again. Now, influence, inspirations, and other normal rewards occur on every PvP kill, while PvP IO recipes can only be rewarded on rep-valid kills.
# Fixed rep-validation to function in arenas, even though it doesn't give you any reputation in arenas.
# Also lowering the rep timer from 10 minutes to 5 minutes.


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so in essence, every rep-valid kill has a chance for a pvp recipe drop, but we can get this chance once every 5 minutes?

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Yes, that's what they were saying. so 12 times an hour you have a chance for 1. they were dropping 1 every 80 kills. 6+ hours maybe to get one if you farm yourself with 2 accounts.

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It's even worse than what you're saying. Assuming a 1-vs-1 match, AT BEST you have a chance for a drop 12 times an hour. But what's really going to happen is that one of you will kill the other at least once during the 5 minute cooldown timer. Then the timer restarts for both of you regardless of who killed whom.. So the most likely outcome is one player has exactly 1 chance of a drop in that hour. The rest of the kills will get no chance at all. This is why players from low population servers are saying this change has screwed them.

This is a sad example of the devs focusing on squashing farming without considering consequences. And what really frosts me in this case is that farming was not a problem. For it to be a problem it'd have to either be demonstrably hurting PVP somehow, or creating an oversupply situation. Given that some of the PVP recipes already regularly go for over 600M inf, I can't see anyone saying with a straight face that there was oversupply.